Hey, when you have a minute maybe we could talk about Shining Rock Church in Annover again. Got a woman and her daughter who left but are probably going back.
She’d barely reached her SUV when her phone chimed a response.
Already gone over that one, remember? Couldn’t find anything solid enough for a search warrant.
I know, but there has to be something. Could you put someone undercover?
Not with what I have so far. Does she or her daughter have evidence we could run with?
I don’t think she’d be willing to go on record.
Then there’s not much I can do. Higher-ups would knock it down. FBI’s on a tight budget, haven’t you heard?
They need help.
She sat in the driver’s seat for several long minutes, watching the last of the light leech from the city before another text came through.
Resend me your notes from the last interview. Maybe I can leverage something based on alleged abuse or trafficking. It’s thin, but I’ll try.
Thank you.
Welcome. And you totally owe me.
She smiled at that. She’d been liaising with the FBI as a consultant for almost four years and Adam Zimmer had been assigned to a division specifically to monitor the threat of destructive cults at the same time. They knew each other as well as anyone could who worked together, many times at long distances, and he’d always followed her recommendations in regard to cult activity, never questioning her findings. Another simpatico they shared was their upbringing. Adam had lived in a cult with his family until the age of five, before his father forced their departure. The event had torn their family apart and defined Adam as he watched his mother and older brother leave him and his father behind to rejoin the religious sect. Beyond their similar background, they truly trusted each other, which in her opinion was better than professionalism any day of the week and twice as good on Sundays.
As she started the vehicle her eyes slipped down to the dashboard, where the time display glared back at her. “Shit.” She pulled out into traffic and accelerated off campus. She was late again.
Chapter Three
The city faded behind her.
Headlights staining the highway, the rush of cars, speeding through the late dusk.
Clare lost herself in it all.
Slowly the tension of the lecture, the meeting afterward, the compulsion to help and subsequent failure eased from her. Traveling did that most times. She could let her mind float in the nether, unhindered. The only spike in worry was knowing she’d kept Eric waiting. Again.
The darker stain of the Northern Coast Mountain Range grew closer on the horizon, soon eating up the view as she guided her vehicle along the pass. The highway wove through pine-studded curves and rocky outcroppings. Despite the falling dark, the rough beauty of the surrounding state forest sent a familiar wave of awe through her.
An hour later the trees and low shrubs gave way to a rounded plain, the vast expanse startling even at night as the earth fell away to the sea. Beyond, the Pacific was a black velvet blanket, unbroken and calm beneath a white sickle of moon. Clare drank in the sight as she neared a Y in the road, taking the right, which drew her away from the ocean view for a time.
Capeside appeared from around the second curve, an ambush of a coastal town, quaint but bustling on weekends, especially during the summer months when Californians traveled north to escape the heat of the cities and expose their children to the “country.” Many of Capeside’s residents commuted as Clare did to larger metropolitan areas, but returned each night to the relative solitude of the little town perched above the sprawl of the ocean.
Clare turned into the cul-de-sac and coasted to a stop before the tidy bungalow she and Eric had shared for the better part of three years. The front porch, normally lit when she returned late, was dark, and only a single light burned in Eric’s office on the second floor.
She sighed, parking her SUV beside Eric’s truck, and gathered her briefcase before heading inside.
The warmth of the foyer was a welcome change from the fall chill outside. She hung her coat on the rack by the door and kicked off her heels, relishing the feel of the hardwood beneath her aching feet.
A single plate covered with tinfoil was at her place on the table, one of their good cloth napkins beside it. She touched the foil. Slightly warm. Eric’s dinner dishes were drying in the rack next to the sink and the smell of lemon and butter hung in the air. He’d cooked salmon and asparagus, her favorite. Adding to the guilt of missing dinner was a group of extinguished candles on the counter. He’d gone all out.
She found him upstairs before his computer in the little office overlooking the street. It was one of two rooms in the house providing a view of the ocean, their bedroom being the other. She’d insisted on him setting up his work station in the spare room instead of the designated office on the lower floor, arguing he needed to rest his eyes every so often from the stock pages he traded on each morning. And what better to look at than the ebb and flow of the Pacific? But now the window was a dark mirror revealing nothing beyond the glass. Instead it reflected her tentative approach behind him.
Eric turned his head as she neared, giving her a tight smile over one shoulder, a glare from the monitor flashing off the rimless glasses he wore. “Hey,” he said, turning back to the screen.
“Hey.” She waited as he typed, trying to figure out how to apologize again for yet another dinner missed.
“Food might still be warm. Otherwise you can toss it in the toaster oven.”
“I’m sorry. The lecture ran long and then there was this woman who brought her sister and niece to see me who’d just left Shining Rock.” She waited for him to respond but he continued typing. “I couldn’t turn her down.”
“It’s okay.”
“Is it?”
He pivoted in his chair. She noticed he wore a nice pair of slacks and a gray button-up shirt, loose at the throat. His hair was combed and a hint of his good cologne wafted to her. “It’s gotta be, right?”
“Honey, I’m sorry. I was planning on leaving right after the lecture and—” She looked at him. Took in the resigned set of his features. Tonight went beyond the slight annoyance at her tardiness. He was genuinely disappointed.
Eric stood and gave her the same pinched smile, kissing her lightly on the corner of her mouth as he passed. “It’s okay.” She stood for a few moments before following him into the hall and to their bedroom two doors down. Eric straightened from his bedside table and began to strip, carefully unbuttoning his shirt.
“What was I supposed to do?” she asked.
“I didn’t say you should’ve done anything different.”
“Then why are you mad?”
He slipped a hanger into the shirt, returning it to their walk-in closet, and despite the tension she caught herself taking in his lean torso, the shift of muscle beneath his skin. “I’m not mad.”
“Then what are you?”
He removed his pants and donned a set of his athletic shorts, pulling on a tattered cut-off shirt before finally facing her. “I’m tired.” He walked past her.